Many organizations allocate selected items of business property according to the needs of the organization and the characteristics of the item and recipient. It is often desirable to allocate these items in response to information provided by a submitter. For example, a submitter might provide information concerning an excess item to match the item to another individual, group, department, site, or other recipient within or outside the organization.
As organizations become larger and more complex to serve a variety of customer and internal requirements, organizations may match items of business property to recipients using various techniques. A known technique for matching an excess item of business property to a recipient uses manual submission, authorization, and request matching processes that are often relatively slow and laborintensive. Information communicated by hard copy, facsimile, or telephone in connection with such techniques may be illegible, inaccurate, misdirected, delayed, or even lost. In addition, authorization for the matching may be obtained and request matching performed inadequately, improperly, or not at all. Furthermore, information concerning excess items may not be maintained in a location that allows access by potential recipients. As a result, matching an item to a recipient may require several days, causing consequent backlogs and undesirable delays. Moreover, organizations using such techniques may have little flexibility to support customer or internal time and space constraints.